View from a partisan Hearst “journalist”, but it seems an accurate a summary as I’ve read so far.
/
Greenwich Democrats celebrat victory November ‘25
Dan Haar: A deep dive into the Democrats' rout of local Republicans in CT cities and towns
…. As most observers know by now, Republicans suffered a rout, ceding the top office in 28 cities and towns to Democrats – or 30, depending on how you count oddities in Killingly (no mayor or first selectman) and Putnam (a mayor who switched parties), up in the state's odd corner.
The GOP took back exactly one town, Easton, by five votes after a recount Wednesday.
With lopsided results like that, you might assume Democrats lured swing voters to their side as Republicans saw their support shrivel. Not true. Republicans didn't lose voters; Democrats gained them.
A close look at the numbers shows that … Republicans running for mayor and first selectman held their ground in 2025, actually adding 2,300 votes compared with GOP candidates in the same towns four years earlier.
Democrats? Across Connecticut, the local candidates for mayor and first selectman turbocharged their combined votes by a powerful 22.5 percent compared with 2021, a hike of just over 50,000 votes amid a backlash against President Donald Trump's actions and the federal shutdown.
And they did it across all counties, in towns large and small, rich and poor, liberal and conservative. The richest towns swung further toward the Democrats, speeding up a shift we've seen in state and federal races for years. Many of the towns that flipped parties at the top are from the industrial heartland and the rural conservative base.
The big question, of course, is whether this municipal mauling of Republicans, echoed across the United States on Election Day, tells us anything about what will happen in 2026 and beyond. Democrats and Republicans don't agree, to no one's surprise. Either way, the numbers offer clues.
Highlights of a rout
We closely examined the town-by-town results, comparing the 124 municipalities that held direct elections for their mayors and first selectmen (and in Farmington, the town council chairman) in both 2025 and 2021. With help from our friends at the nonprofit CTData Collaborative (CTData.org) we looked at the breakdown by population, median income and educational attainment in each city and town.
We chose 2021 because that's on the same four-year cycle as 2025, the year following a presidential election. Hartford, Bridgeport and Waterbury, among other places, did not hold elections for mayor in either year.
The rout swung control of a majority of city and town halls from the Republicans – their last bastion of power in this state – to Democrats, who now control 102 of 169 cities and towns. Some highlights:
TRUMP SWOON: The GOP won in 78 of the 124 cities and towns four years ago, in the year following former President Joe Biden's defeat of former and current President Donald Trump. They had a combined average margin of 1.9 percentage points in their favor. This year, Republicans won just 48 of those races even though they had a nice head start with 21 unopposed races. And when this year's votes were tallied, the average margin showed Democrats ahead by 7.3 percentage points – a 9.2 percentage point swing.
A FACTORY SHIFT: Among the 30 that swung from Republican to Democratic control, all except six of them are either rural or old-line industrial towns, not high-income. The flips include Bristol, Ansonia, Stratford, Windsor Locks and New Britain, all notable factory towns. Ten of the flipped towns sided with Trump in 2024. Translation: Blue-collar, "Reagan Democrats," perhaps coming back to the party.
GOP HUGS THE MIDDLE: The CTData Collaborative focused on the 83 races in 2025 with a Democrat and Republican vying head-to-head for a top office. Democrats won this group 57 to 26. CTData divided the towns and cities into quintile groups based on population, income and percent of adults with a bachelors degree or higher. Their conclusion: Democrats won evenly in all population groups. By income and education, Republicans fared somewhat better in the middle quintiles. As I see it, that appears to reflect a target audience of MAGA Republicans.
THE RICH SWITCH: A reversal happened in the 30 richest towns among the 124. Republicans took 19 corner offices in those town halls four years ago compared with 10 for Democrats. This time around, Democrats claimed 16 of them and Republicans settled for just 12. (Two went to petitioning candidates.)
EARLY VOTING: Democrats handed in more than their share of early and absentee ballots, as 104,000 registered party members voted that way – nearly 30,000 more than what we would expect based on their registration. Republican voters submitted 45,000 early and absentee votes, exactly what we would expect based on their numbers. We know who they are, by name, but we don't know whether those early-voting Democrats would have cast ballots on Election Day.
HEFTY GAINS: In 62 towns, Democrats and Republicans faced each other head-to head for first selectman or mayor in both 2025 and 2021. At the midpoint of that list in 2021, Republicans won by 8.8 percentage points. The midpoint for 2025 had Democrats winning by 9.1 points. Forty-three times in those races this year, Democrats posted a vote increase of at least 15 percent over 2021. For example, Stratford's David Chess bested Republican Mayor Laura Hoydick by fetching 3,171 votes more than Hoydick's 2021 opponent, a 67% leap. GOP candidates, by contrast, logged 15 percent gains just nine times in last week's balloting – and lost seven of those races.
THIS DOESN'T REGISTER: The Republican Party expanded its statewide voter rolls by 26,250 between 2021 and 2025, reaching 21.7 percent of all registered voters. Democrats lost 32,400 over the last four years, falling to 35.2 percent. Remarkably, Democrats gained 50,000 votes for top town candidates despite losing nearly 59,000 people from their registration buffer. They needed a sharp rise in turnout and they got it – as 81,000 more voters showed up in 2025 than in 2021, most voting for Democrats.
What does it all mean? Clearly, a backlash against Trump and the federal government shutdown helped Democrats in Connecticut and across the nation. But every local race has its own story. One incumbent Republican fired a popular town employee and lost narrowly. Another had an open family feud play out on social media. Another ran afoul of the police and fire unions.
…
Alves and other Democrats say the Trump effect, drawing voters out of the woodwork, should hold up. "It’s galvanizing," Alves said to me. "It gave hope to folks who were just upset, possibly disengaged."
Not true, Ben Proto, the Republican state chairman, countered. Presidential wins are always bad for their parties in the local elections that follow, he told me. It's rarely this bad, although, as Proto said, we're not likely to see a threat to both SNAP food assistance and health care subsidies loom so large in 2026.
It's hard to imagine Connecticut Republicans advancing while Trump holds office. Proto disagreed strongly when I said that.
"The Democrats I think were clearly better organized and I think it had more to do with the shutdown than with Trump in particular," Proto told me. "Somehow the Democrats are going to have to keep all these Democrats who turned out, all hopped up for another year."
For that task, Democrats have a powerful ally in the Oval Office.
And counterpoint, from a Walter Curt:
To me, Curt seems to be channeling Dylan Thomas and his Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, but I’ve always been a pessimist.
Jonathan Turley has looked into the future and likes it no more than I do: Punch-drunk partisans reveal their plans to pack the Supreme Court
…. Elections can have the same effect for some to become drunk on even the prospect of power. Partisans can blurt out their inner thoughts with shocking frankness.
That was the case this week as Democratic luminaries discussed plans to retake power and then fundamentally change the constitutional system to guarantee they will never have to give it up again.
It turns out that winning votes in three blue states and a blue city in an off-year election can be quite intoxicating. It is easy to dismiss it as the talk of chest-thumping, bar-room blowhards about whom they were going to thump. But there is a truth in the bravado.
…. [Democrats] were proclaiming their plans not only to retake power but never to lose it again. That means weakening the greatest single check on power: the Supreme Court. The talk of court-packing had died down after Democrats lost both houses of Congress and the White House. Now, after the elections last week, such talk is back with a vengeance.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder was telling anyone who would listen this week, suggesting that once Democrats take control, they intend to keep it permanently.
Holder explained on a podcast: “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power, if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.” When asked about the priority in wielding that power, Holder declared that the court was hopelessly broken and had to be fundamentally changed: “It’s something that has to be, I think, a part of the national conversation in ‘26 and in ‘28, ‘What are we going to do about the Supreme Court?’”
In other words, the court, as we know it, has got to go. While some on the left are questioning the very need for a Supreme Court or calling for it to be simply defied or “dissolved,” others want it to be stacked with political activists, like some state supreme courts are.
The problem has long been the focus of liberal academics planning for sweeping changes to the system. Many have called for the elimination of the Senate filibuster to force through measures making Puerto Rico and D.C. states with the addition of four new senators. Others want election and immigration “reforms” viewed as favoring Democratic campaigns.
That, however, leads them back to the inconvenient Supreme Court.
Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.
This week, Democratic strategist James Carville laid out the step-by-step process of how the pack-to-power plan would work.
“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen,” he said. “A Democrat is going to be elected in 2028. You know that. I know that. The Democratic president is going to announce a special transition advisory committee on the reform of the Supreme Court. They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.”
Carville returned to explain that court-packing will now be as inevitable as Democrats taking power. “That’s going to happen to you,” he said. “They’re going to win. They’re going to do some blue ribbon panel of distinguished jurists, and they are going to recommend 13, and a Democratic Senate and House is going to pass it, and the Democratic president is going to sign it, because they have to do an intervention so we can have a Supreme Court that the American people trust again.”
So, with the legislative and executive branches in their hands, some Democrats are planning to decapitate the judicial branch — just in time for the 250th anniversary of our revolution.
After all, as Holder explained, it is all about “the acquisition and the use of power.”